


Electrolite

by Ashura



Series: All Tomorrow's Shadows [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts, M/M, Secret Relationship, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-09-01
Updated: 2002-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-21 09:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2463893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/pseuds/Ashura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Secrets well-kept keep one from having to make hard choices. (Posting old fics from back in the day; this is from 2002. Remember back when songfic was a thing?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Electrolite

**Author's Note:**

> This fic even pre-dates the creation of my LJ sometime in the summer of 2002. And I don't hate it, or the trilogy it's part of, so might as well post it to Ao3 rather than lose it somewhere in the grand void of the internet. For nostalgia's sake, if nothing else. Lyrics are from REM's 'Electrolite', off 'New Adventures in Hi-Fi'.

_Your eyes are burnin’ holes through me_  
 _I’m gasoline, I’m burning clean_  
 _Twentieth century go and sleep_  
 _You’re Pleistocene. That is obscene._

_You are the star tonight_  
 _Your sun electric, outtasight_  
 _your light eclipsed the moon tonight_

There’s a moment, just before I kiss you, when you look shocked. Like you don’t know if I’ll change my mind, all of a sudden, and hit you instead. Like you might pull away.

You don’t, because you’re brave. Not because you trust me, but because you trust yourself. You know there’s nothing I can do to you that you can’t get out of. That if you needed to overpower me, you could.

I know it too, and sometimes I’m grateful for the illusion, and sometimes I don’t understand why we bother with it.

But then it’s not the only thing we deceive ourselves in, is it? You come crawling into my bed under the shelter of an invisible cloak, and we tread so softly on our way outside that not even the ghosts can hear us. We hide our kisses in the shadows, and the evidence of them wherever we land—under the stands of the Quidditch pitch or the copse of alders by the lake, the eaves of the classroom wing. We made love in Hagrid’s garden once, just for the danger of it—you were afraid he’d come out and catch us, I was more worried about being mauled by one of his pets. You’re the only one who gets to paw at me in the middle of the night, thank you very much.

We were both terrified. It was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.

Does that say something about us, I wonder? It’s no secret that you’re a danger nut, Potter, it’s all the staff at this school can do to keep your head permanently attached to your body. Then again, you keep proving yourself ridiculously difficult to kill. You get into trouble, but you always scramble out of it—not always gracefully, but always alive. Harry Potter, wonder boy. And I wonder, are you starting to believe your own legends? The rumours are plentiful. I’ve heard you fried six death eaters (my father among them, though he was still alive as of this morning, unless someone with very similar handwriting and vocabulary is sending me owls) with a glare, that flowers spring from the grass under your feet, that the sheer force of your presence can repel a bludger in flight from a yard away.

There are no rumours about you sneaking out at night to have sex with Draco Malfoy.

There are no rumours about you naked and sweaty, under cover of darkness and whatever feeble shelter we’ve found, whimpering my name, biting at your lip to keep it silent on your tongue. Nothing about the way there is no bottom to your eyes, dilated and glassy, or your fingernails (chewed short) digging desperate red crescents into my skin. Nothing about the way you shiver when my tongue touches that place in the hollow of your neck, or the sweetness of your pleading and your hands in my hair when I take you in my mouth.

No, that is all our secret.

And so it will remain indefinitely, because it is easier for us both. For a short span of time, there are no appearances to maintain. There is nothing to think about, because we prevent ourselves from thinking. With thought, with a _relationship_ , come complications neither of us is willing to investigate just yet.

You arcing into me, whining, my lips around you—no need then to wonder how many shades of purple your dear friends would beat me if they knew I was doing this to you. Or whether you would stop them, when they did.

Your strong fingers around me, pumping—your tongue lapping at my skin where a good boy’s tongue should never be, and my entire body quivering with the knowledge of you—I do not waste it pondering the fall my reputation would take if anyone knew you could reduce me to this. Or whether I would care.

Our fingers, trembling, wet, inside each other—mouths hot, so hot I think steam rises from our lips and clouds the air—it is not time to consider what choices may yet lie ahead of us, or what struggles our respective destinies may have in store for us.

Pinning you against the ground, your hands fisting in the grass or digging into my back, the tip of my tongue tracing the jagged line of that famous, identifying scar—a moment when I don’t have to think about what put it there.

When I kiss you, I remember only as far back as the first (saw you walking past the pitch after midnight, nobody around, moonlight gleaming off your skin). I remember only darkness, nights spent in feverish coupling, experimenting with you in the grass in the shadows in the dirt—never the daylight, never the insults or the glares or the humiliation of watching you walk away from me.

We don’t have a relationship. Not that either of us has ever had anything to compare to, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

Then again, we’ve never actually said we’re just fucking, either. We haven’t said much of anything. Maybe we’re not as brave as we like to think we are.

At night, we have no inhibitions. You have seen me, touched me, done things to me that I would never allow anyone to know I had _thought_. You have been inside me, and I in you. I have drunk your soul out through your lips and breathed it back into you, you have turned me inside-out and then folded me against you. It is the lack of acknowledgement that gives us intimacy—as if, maybe, we are dreaming, and if we put no words to what we do, then maybe it didn’t happen after all.

And maybe in the light of day it would dissolve. And yes, that frightens me. I never want to look at you across the Great Hall at breakfast and feel dirty, or worry that you’ve betrayed this unspoken trust somehow. I don’t know if you think the same of me—don’t bother, there’s nobody I’d tell something like this to anyway. If you want trust, make friends with Gryffindors. Never share secrets with Slytherins.

What a hypocritical thing. But this is my secret, too.

So just let me kiss you. Let me defile the hero’s body (what would they think if they knew), let us roll here in the grass in a tangle of limbs and tomorrow, when we walk past, let our eyes glance quickly to see if the grass is still bent in the imprint of our bodies. That will be enough to show that it did happen. That it has happened, and that it will continue, like a dream, indefinite—a thousand years can pass in a dream, after all, yet for only minutes are we asleep.

And one more time (how many more?), let’s not talk. No more than names, and that in gasps and pleading only. I will not ask if, with the sun shining, you would still choose me. You will not place yourself against my family’s wrath and make me decide. We will go on like this, half-empty, because at least it is something. It is easier, being secret, for both of us.

And in the moonlight I lose myself in your bottomless eyes and the roughness of your skin, your eager graspings and half-whispered moans. They will not be the same eyes when I see you in the halls tomorrow, flanked by your friends, your books held defensive across your chest. And my eyes will not be the same either, narrow, angry. Oh yes, I will spit your name at you then. And I wonder if it will sound strange to you, if you will recall how those same syllables on my lips are so different now, tonight.

One day, Harry, we may have to choose.

One day we may at least have to speak.

Do you know what will happen then?

_Your eyes are burnin’ holes through me_  
 _I’m not scared..._


End file.
